


Well, I'll be damned

by the_pen_is_mightier



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale Falls, Aziraphale loves Crowley, Crowley loves Aziraphale, M/M, Mostly Fluff and Feelings, Takes place post-canon, They're on their own side, everything is going to be just fine, you think this will be angsty but it's really not bad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-07 03:29:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20302723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_pen_is_mightier/pseuds/the_pen_is_mightier
Summary: Aziraphale Falls. He takes it better than you'd think.





	Well, I'll be damned

Aziraphale hadn’t known what to do, how to respond, when Gabriel and Sandalphon had appeared outside his bookshop wearing identical strained smiles. So he’d done what he always did - ushered them awkwardly inside, into his back room so they could speak privately. There were no customers in, and Aziraphale had merely been thankful he didn’t have to listen to Gabriel pretend to buy books again. He hadn’t let himself think about what this visit meant. 

He’d kept himself in a little self-made unreality all the way up until the words were actually said. 

“Aziraphale of the Eastern Gate,” Gabriel said, his voice flat, “you are no longer fit to be called a servant of God.” 

Aziraphale swallowed. “Ah - well, I might - I might possibly disagree with you there.”

“Your agreement is immaterial,” said Sandalphon coldly. 

“Mmm.” He fidgeted. “Yes. Quite.” 

So easy, to imagine he didn’t know what they’d come for. Even when Sandalphon stepped forward, his gaze like flint, like flaming steel, Aziraphale kept up a nervous smile. Even when his heart began to pound hard in his chest, foreseeing the words even when his mind did not, he kept his hands clasped behind his back, smart, respectful, clinging to a world that had already slipped away from them. 

“You are no longer an angel,” Sandalphon intoned. “God’s grace is hereby removed from you.” 

“Sandalphon, I don’t think there’s any need - I mean - ah -”

Sandalphon placed a hand on Aziraphale’s chest. 

For a moment something light and hot, almost painfully so, seemed to rise up inside Aziraphale to meet Sandalphon’s palm. A celestial blaze responding to an angelic call. For a moment it felt that Sandalphon’s touch burned, and then that a radiant flame was passing through his skin - and then Sandalphon pulled his hand away and the heat was replaced by nothingness. Aziraphale gasped and felt his knees buckle. The angels, faces still frozen into false smiles, stepped back from him in unison. 

_Falling_. His knees thudded against the carpet. The pain barely registered; in another moment his wings had burst from his back, and he could feel them spread behind him, and though he couldn’t see he could _feel_ them blackening with stains like ink over weak paper - and his lungs were robbed of air, his throat of speech, as Gabriel and Sandalphon smirked down at him, imposing and more terrible than he’d ever seen them - as Aziraphale’s angelic aura shriveled and evaporated. 

“You are now Fallen,” said Gabriel. 

Aziraphale was frozen; he couldn’t breathe in, couldn’t formulate a thought, could only gape at them. 

“You have been formally cast out of Heaven,” said Sandalphon, “and will not be welcomed back.” 

No words. Numbness replaced the temporary pain; Aziraphale was trembling all over, but he couldn’t process the emotions that rocked him. He couldn’t feel them, couldn’t let them sink into the coldness, the shock within. He was Fallen. He was cut off from Heaven. It had happened, the thing he’d lived in terror of for six thousand years, the thing that had hounded him, that had driven him from Crowley in fear. One gesture from an archangel and he was an exile.

“Have a nice damnation,” said Gabriel, “demon Aziraphale.”

Aziraphale stared as their forms morphed into jets of light, beaming them upward to the sky. 

_Fallen. Fallen. Fallen, fallen, fallen fallen fallen fallenfallenfall -_

He forced himself to stand, still shaking. He still hadn’t let the emotions sink in. He still couldn’t quite feel them, though they buzzed on his skin, hummed at the edges of his brain - just around the soreness on his chest where a searing light had been yanked out of him. His ears seemed full of static as he pulled open the back room’s door. Perhaps it was because of that that he didn’t hear the shop’s front door open. That he didn’t realize someone else had arrived until he heard the voice. 

_“Aziraphale!”_

Aziraphale looked up, still mute. Crowley stood, his hair disheveled, his sunglasses off and his eyes stretched wide without them. When they fell on Aziraphale, Crowley launched himself toward him.

“Aziraphale, I felt it, I sensed it happening and I came - oh -” Crowley gaped at Aziraphale’s blackened wings, fear and horror and disgust written on his features. “Those bastards - I can’t believe -”

“Crowley,” said Aziraphale, his voice weak. It was the first word he’d spoken. 

Crowley’s arms were around him at once, holding Aziraphale tight to his chest. Against Aziraphale’s ear he was whispering agonized apologies, an endless stream of them, desperate and terrified. Aziraphale pulled away slightly to see Crowley’s face, and in it was a deep, ancient fear - a fear that Aziraphale’s next words would contain condemnation and blame, a fear that Aziraphale would send him away for what he’d caused, what he’d cost him. A fear that somehow this would make Aziraphale love him less. 

And at last Aziraphale found his voice. 

“Crowley,” he said, “I’m fine.”

Crowley stared at him, openmouthed. And Aziraphale saw shock dawn in those snake’s eyes at what he knew Crowley could see - knew, because Aziraphale felt it himself, finally sinking in at the sight of the demon he loved. Running into every vein and artery at once, an overpowering, staggering relief.

“I’m the same,” he whispered, gazing at Crowley. “It’s - it’s no different at all.” 

Crowley’s brow wrinkled. “But…”

“Look at me!” Aziraphale stepped back, his legs no longer wobbling beneath him; he spread his hands and beamed down at himself. The same shirt and vest, the same bowtie, the same light and creamy colors. His waist still the same, full and soft. The burning on his chest was already nearly gone, only an aftereffect of contact from Sandalphon’s hand. No dark cloud hung around him. “I’m the same, Crowley - same as I was when I was an angel. I’m _me._” 

“But you’re -”

“A demon.” Aziraphale’s eyes shone as he drew closer again, his hands clutching Crowley’s, warmth flooding through him. “My dear, it doesn’t matter.”

Crowley shook his head. He looked overwhelmed, far more than Aziraphale felt. Aziraphale couldn’t help himself - he laughed. The laugh was like the release of a tension that had been building for six thousand years. 

“It was all just picking-sides nonsense, after all,” he said. “Heaven and Hell. It has nothing to do with right and wrong. They both wanted to wipe out the Earth, didn’t they? Neither of them is good. We were right, Crowley, to oppose them. Being cast out of Heaven…” 

Crowley’s breath hitched as though smothering a sob. Aziraphale’s eyes locked on his again. He realized suddenly that Crowley was on the verge of tears. 

Aziraphale reached up and cradled Crowley’s face in his hands. He knew, he understood perfectly what Crowley was thinking. It was the same thing he’d thought himself time after time. It was only now, with black wings, that he saw how ridiculous it had always been. 

“Being cast out of Heaven,” he said, “it doesn’t make you evil.” 

Crowley groaned and leaned his forehead against Aziraphale’s. Aziraphale held him close, keeping him steady. Keeping them both from continuing to tremble, anchoring them. 

If he’d thought the embrace would somehow be less, now that he could no longer sense the love that came from Crowley, he couldn’t have been more wrong. When Crowley put his arms around Aziraphale once more, when he kissed him, long and deep and patient, there was nothing greater Aziraphale could have asked for. He couldn’t have fathomed a larger demonstration of devotion. Willingly given, not sensed without Crowley’s knowledge, not a forced confession but a gift to him. A love not bound to the constraints of Heaven, a love that existed without mandate or consequence. A love as electrifyingly real as Aziraphale could ever have wished. 

“We’re free,” Aziraphale whispered.

Crowley pulled away, eyes wondering. “Free?”

“Free of them. Of Heaven. Forever.” He felt another laugh rise to the surface. What had he possibly wanted to hold on to there, anyway? Hadn’t he always been looked down on there, always been a disappointment? Hadn’t Crowley been the one to teach him what real love looked like? Oh, he‘d been an idiot. There was no reason at all not to give his heart. 

Free. _Free._ Fallen and free. 

Crowley’s face melted with affection. “Yes, angel. You’re right.”

Aziraphale chuckled. “You’ll have to choose a different name for me now, dear.” 

Crowley’s fingers clenched. “No.” 

There was a moment of silence, then Aziraphale smiled. “Oh, very well then.” 

It was a long time before either of them felt like moving. Before it occurred to them that they didn’t need to stay there, folded into each other’s arms in the middle of the bookshop, that they could go anywhere they liked. Aziraphale at last stepped away from Crowley.

“What would you say,” he said, “to a dinner at the Ritz?” 

“Absolutely.” Crowley grinned. “On me, since you’ve had such a taxing afternoon.” 

“I rather do think that’s in order.” Aziraphale folded his wings in and examined himself again. “But I need to clean up first. These pants are all wrinkled, and there’s some sort of stain on my shirt -” he flicked at a black, sooty mark where Sandalphon's hand had pulled away. 

“Can’t you just do a miracle?”

Aziraphale’s mouth opened in outrage. “A miracle? We’re going fine dining, Crowley, I most certainly will _not_ be using a cheap miracle to get myself ready. The idea!”

Crowley threw back his head and laughed. “Oh, angel.”

“What?”

“Never change, all right?” 

Aziraphale smiled, straightening his tie. Here he stood, surrounded by his books, in the shop he’d owned for centuries - here, making dinner plans with Crowley in the same easy way he’d done since Rome. Falling wasn’t so bad after all. “I never will.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Find me on tumblr @whatawriterwields!


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